In the fall of 1949, shortly before his death, he
married Sonia Brownell.
In 1949 Orwell spoke to the Information Research Department, an
organization run by the government to encourage the publication of anticommunist propaganda. He offered them information on the “cryptocommunist leanings” of some of his fellow writers and advice on how best
to spread the anti-communist message. Orwell’s motives for this are
unclear, though it does not necessarily follow that he had abandoned
socialism - merely that he detested Stalinism, as he had already made very
clear in his earlier published works. Some have also speculated that the
tuberculosis from which he suffered had affected him mentally. Orwell died at the age of 47 from tuberculosis that he probably had
contracted during the period described in Down and Out in Paris and
London . He was in and out of hospitals for the last three years of his life.
Having requested burial in accordance to the Anglican rite, he was interred
in All Saint’s Churchyard, Sutton Courtenay, Oxfordshire under his real
name, Eric Arthur Blair.
Orwell consistently declared that he was an atheist from adolescence.
In his works he rarely mentions the occult, and when he does it is usually
to mock the belief in it (see, for instance, the passage in the novel Coming
Up for Air in which a professional medium accidentally drops a piece of
cheesecloth concealed in his pants). However, there are indications that the
young Eric Blair had a keen concern for the supernatural. Inside George
Orwell , a biography written by Gordon Bowker and published in 2003,

cites a letter written on his deathbed by Sir Steven Runciman, a medieval historian who was Orwell’s friend at Eton. The letter indicates that Orwell became interested in voodoo after reading the Ingoldsby Legends by R.H. Barham, which describe killing by black magic. Runciman and Orwell used a wax image to harm an older boy whom they “disliked for being unkind to his juniors”. Runciman says that Orwell wanted to stick a pin into the heart of our image, but that frightened me, so we compromised by breaking off his right leg – and he did break his leg a few days later playing football and he died young. The book however claims that Orwell confided in a few friends that his adoption of a pen name was intended to prevent his enemies from using his real name to work magic against him. Bowker also claims that Orwell was troubled by visions of his death and that he experienced ghost sightings throughout his life, all of which conflict with the rationalism usually associated with Orwell.

During most of his professional life time Orwell was best known for his journalism, both in the British press and in books of reportage such as Homage to Catalonia (describing his activities during the Spanish Civil War), Down and Out in Paris and London (describing a period of poverty in these cities), and The Road to Wigan Pier (which described the living conditions of poor miners in northern England). According to Newsweek , Orwell “was the finest journalist of his day and the foremost architect of the English essay since Hazlitt.”

Orwell is, however, most remembered today for two of his novels: Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four . The former is an allegory of the corruption of the socialist ideals of the Russian Revolution by Stalinism, and the latter is Orwell’s prophetic vision of the results of totalitarianism. Nineteen Eighty-Four also presents Orwell’s philosophy reguarding metaphysical objectivism. Orwell had returned from Catalonia a staunch anti-Stalinist and anti-Communist, but he remained to the end a man of the left and, in his own words, a ‘democratic socialist’.

Another widely known work of Orwell is his classic essay “Politics and the English Language”, in which he decries the effects of political propaganda, official language, and superficial thinking on literary styles, vocabulary, and ultimately on thought itself. Orwell’s concern over the declining power of language to capture and express reality with honesty is also reflected in his invention of “Newspeak”, the language of the imaginary country of Oceania in his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four .

http://collegebookshelf.net

Newspeak is a variant of English in which vocabulary is strictly limited by government fiat. The goal is to make it increasingly difficult to express ideas that contradict the official line - and, in time, even to conceive such ideas. (cf. Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis).

Orwell’s literary and political career was dominated by the tension between his desire for greater equality and social justice, and his ambivalent attitude towards his own middle-class background. “You have nothing to lose but your aitches” as he once said in mocking of middleclass taboos about pronunciation.

Contents

Chapter 1. Chapter 2. Chapter 3. Chapter 4. Chapter 5. Chapter 6. Chapter 7. Chapter 8. Chapter 9. Chapter 10.

Click on a number in the chapter list to go to the first page of that chapter.

Note:
The best way to read this ebook is in Full Screen mode: click View, Full Screen to set Adobe Acrobat to Full Screen View. This mode allows you to use Page Down to go to the next page, and affords the best reading view. Press Escape to exit the Full Screen View.

http://collegebookshelf.net 1

Animal Farm.

NOTICE
Copyright © 2004 thewritedirection.net
Please note that although the text of this ebook is in the public domain,

this pdf edition is a copyrighted publication.
FOR COMPLETE DETAILS, SEE
COLLEGEBOOKSHELF.NET/COPYRIGHTS

Chapter 1.

Mr. Jones, of the Manor Farm, had locked the hen-houses for the night, but was too drunk to remember to shut the pop-holes. With the ring of light from his lantern dancing from side to side, he lurched across the yard, kicked off his boots at the back door, drew himself a last glass of beer from the barrel in the scullery, and made his way up to bed, where Mrs. Jones was already snoring.

As soon as the light in the bedroom went out there was a stirring and a fluttering all through the farm buildings. Word had gone round during the day that old Major, the prize Middle White boar, had had a strange dream on the previous night and wished to communicate it to the other animals. It had been agreed that they should all meet in the big barn as soon as Mr.